Sunday, March 26, 2017

Hetta Coffey is going to a party. And a posh affair it’s going to be, too. Which is quite unusual, given the locale is the Baja California peninsula of
Mexico. Hetta’s going as the guest of
her best bud, Jan, who’s been hired for the night by the host of the party, a
chap named Hiro Ishikawa.

Ishikawa’s
paying Jan to be his “escort” during the party.
Hmm. That sounds like there’s
some strings attached. Bedroom
strings. But Jan assures Hetta that no
such extracurricular activity is included.
Instead, Ishikawa will be paying her $50,000 just to be his companion as
he mingles with the partygoers, with the money going towards funding Jan’s
boyfriend’s search for a sunken galleon.

Man, that seems an exorbitant price to pay for one night’s worth of
“everything’s above the board” escorting, doesn’t it? Is Ishikawa out of his mind?!

Well yes, as a matter of fact, he is. Actually, he’s
completely out of his head.
Someone has just decapitated him.

What’s To Like...

I liked the setting for Just Needs Killin’: everything takes place in
various towns and marinas up and down the two sides of Baja California.. A lot of it is aboard Hetta’s
modestly-sized yacht. The author’s Amazon blurb
indicates she lives on a boat in the same area, and the literary maxim of “write about what you’re familiar with”
is put to good use here.

There
are some Japanese phrases thrown in, which I thought was kewl since I know
virtually no Japanese. And some Spanish as well, which I have some familiarity
with. I learned what a “panga” and a “hotel de paso” are, and appreciated the brief tip-of-the hat to the Kingston Trio, one
of my favorite folk groups. Also, I
thoroughly liked the fact that Hetta's an engineer by vocation, even more so
that she’s probably a chemical engineer who until recently was working with a
copper mine in Mexico. My company in real
life sells chemicals to copper mines in Mexico, so this was a pleasant,
unlooked-for tie-in.

The
story is written in the first-person POV, and Hetta reminded me a lot of Janet
Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum. This POV means, however, that a lot of the
action – the killings and abductions, for instance – takes place off-stage, so
the book verges on being a cozy. To
boot, there is a lot of over-the-top stuff: things like a secret corridor on a
boat (huh?),
a bad guy brandishing a rather non-lethal weapon and hoping no one notices (oh, come on,
now), and the whole idea of two little amateur ladies deciding to
take out a Mexican gangster on his home turf (don’t try this in real life). However, it’s no more far-fetched than the stuff Clive
Cussler writes, so if Dirk Pitt’s your idea of a hero, you’ll probably enjoy meeting
Hetta Coffey.

Just Needs Killin’ is a standalone novel
while also part of a series. This was my
first Hetta Coffey novel, but I didn’t feel like I missed much by not having
read the first five books. The pacing is
fast, the dialogues are amusing, and there were no slow spots. It’s all about the action.

Kewlest New Word…

Panga(n.)
: a modest-sized, open, outboard-powered fishing boat common throughout much of
the developing world.

Excerpts...

“Now, there you
go, I am no longer a witness, but a full fledged co-conspirator.”

I gave her a
high-five. “Thelma and Louise!”

“Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid!”

“Bonnie and
Clyde!”

Jan lost her
grin. “Uh, Hetta. Didn’t all of them, like, die?”

“We all die.”(loc. 1869)

“You two lost another anchor?” Chino said at dinner
that evening.

“Lost is such a
harsh word.”

Chino grinned at
me. “What word would you use to describe
cutting two anchor lines in less than two months?”

“Uh, temporarily
misplaced?” One thing for sure, both
anchors were incriminating evidence that we were somewhere we were not supposed
to be. “You can dock my pay.”

“You aren’t
getting paid.”

“See, problem
solved.”(loc. 3579)

Kindle Details...

Just Needs Killin’ sells for $3.99 at Amazon, which is
the standard price for all of Jinx Schwartz’s e-books, including the other
seven books in the series, and two other books outside of it. The 8-book Hetta Coffey series is also
available as two 4-book bundles for $9.99 each, which is a nice bit of
savings if you intend to read the whole set.

“When seconds count, the
cops are only minutes away.” (loc.
1184)

There
are a couple quibbles. I struggled to
determine the overall plotline. It seemed
like it couldn’t make up its mind what it wanted to be. The story starts out as a murder-mystery, but
that fades away, its place is taken by a
plot concocted by the heroes to kill the big bad baddie.
Soon afterward, it moves on to “find the treasure”, then pops back to kill
the baddie again, and finally switches to a
“find a
different treasure” theme. Mixed into this was a “what to do
about dear Aunt Lillian”tangent which never did seem to have any impact on
any of the other plotlines.

All this hopping around of the storylines made for a rather disjointed
read. But I’m new to the series, so
maybe this is the norm for a Hetta Coffey tale.

Then
there was the repeated use of ethnic-based wit. Mexicans and Japanese get stereotyped to
death, and even Canadians get poked fun at on one occasion (40% Kindle). I recognize
that some ethnic bantering is inevitable in a setting like this one, but does
it have to be the major source of wit? I’d
think Hetta would have a greater appreciation of Mexican culture, being
immersed in it as she is.

7½ Stars.
Setting the quibbles aside, I found Just Needs Killin’ to be a fast-moving, fun, light
read, one that’s ideal for an afternoon at the beach or for a stretch on an airplane. For me personally, it was the perfect reading balance
as I continue to slog my way through Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity‘s
Rainbow opus.

Are you a punctuation stickler? Does it grate your nerves when people mess up
using its/it’s? If you saw the sign: “Come
inside for CD’S, VIDEO’S, DVD’S and BOOK’S!”would you have the desire to run
screaming into the store, telling the proprietor to correct that atrocity
immediately?!

Do
you yearn to know the eight different uses of the apostrophe, the six uses of
the comma (plus
a couple of situation where they’re optional), and the ten (count ‘em, ten!) various uses of the
hyphen?

Do you worry that the semicolon is heading
toward extinction? Do you have an
opinion about the Oxford comma? What
about double possessives (“a friend of the couple’s”)? Are you aware that brackets come in no less
than four different forms?

If
your answers to one or all of these questions is “Yes! Damn right!”, then Shoots,
Eats & Leaves is a must-read for you. Prepare to be excited! Motivated! And join with others of us in shouting the
slogan coined by the author of the book :

Sticklers
unite! You have nothing to lose but your
sense of proportion (and arguably you didn’t have a lot of that to begin with).

What’s To Like...

Eats, Shoots &
Leaves’ sole subject is punctuation.
Normally, this is an yawn-inducing topic, but Lynne Truss keeps you
entertained with fascinating anecdotal history, eyebrow-raising trivia, and
dry, British wit that will have you chortling.

But don’t be lulled into a false sense of hilarity; this book will also answer any questions you may
have about proper punctuation. I was
particularly keen on this because commas have always been daunting to me. When do you use them? Where do you place them? Are there “gray areas” where their use is a
matter of opinion. This book answered
all my questions.

The anecdotes are great. You’ll
learn about the Jameson Raid telegram and its disastrous consequences due to
ambiguous punctuation. You’ll discover that
the Bible in its original form has no punctuation marks, leaving some critical
passages open to Catholic-vs-Protestant interpretation. And I’m eager to get my membership in the
Apostrophe Protection Society, which really exists.

I
liked the book’s structure. A whole
chapter on the apostrophe, followed by a whole chapter on commas. Then one detailing the finer points of colons
and semicolons; followed by one on a bunch of the “lesser” bits of punctuation:
exclamation points, question marks, italics, quotation marks, the dash,
brackets, “sic”, and the esoteric ellipsis (three dots).
After a short chapter about hyphens, the book closes with the
author’s “where do we go from here?”speculation.
Yes, emoticons get some ink, but it was the interrobang that really caught
my eye.

It
should be mentioned that, like grammar, the rules for proper punctuation change
with time. And that the British rules
for punctuation are sometimes different than the American rules. Lynne Truss points out these variances along
the way, but Eats, Shoots & Leaves
is written, and punctuated, in English, not American.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Solecism(n.)
: a grammatical mistake in speech or writing.

Others :
Loudhailer(n.); Naff-all(adj.).

Excerpts...

The stops point
out, with truth, the time of pause

A sentence doth
require at ev’ry clause.

At ev’ry comma,
stop while one you count;

At semicolon, two is the amount;

A colon doth
require the time of three;

The period four, as learned men agree. (loc. 1100)

(T)here will
always be a problem about getting rid of the hyphen: if it’s not extra-marital
sex (with a hyphen), it is perhaps extra marital sex, which is quite a
different bunch of coconuts. Phrases
abound that cry out for hyphens. Those
much-invoked examples of the little used car, the superfluous hair remover, the
pickled herring merchant, the slow moving traffic and the two hundred odd
members of the Conservative Party would all be lost without it. (loc. 1568)

Kindle Details...

Eats,
Shoots & Leavessells for $11.99, although I snagged it when
it was discounted for a short time. Lynne Truss has three other reference books; they are in the $10.99-$14.99 range. She also has written several humor-fiction
novels, and they are more modestly priced in the $0.99-$3.99 range.

“Getting your itses mixed up
is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation.” (loc. 521)

The
quibbles are minor. My main gripe is
that the book is very short. There are
only 209 pages, and the first 24%
of the book is consumed by a Forward, a Publisher’s Note, and Preface, and an
Introduction. Also, the “reference”
links didn’t work and worse yet, didn’t give you an option to get back to your
original page.

But that’s about it for the quibbles. The
bottom line is, I was looking for a book that would amuse me to no end,
teach me the right and wrong usages of punctuation, and most importantly, tell
me where I have options. Eats, Shoots & Leaves did all of this, and
more.

9½ Stars.
I remember Borders Bookstores promoting
the heck out of Eats, Shoots & Leaves
when it first came out. For quite a few
months, that cute, homicidal panda on the book cover would beckon to you as you
stood in line waiting for the next available cashier. I regret now that I didn’t give in to that
bit of enticement. <Sighs>RIP, Borders: b. 1971, d. 2011.

Louis
Wu is the Chosen One. An artificial
Dyson sphere (ring,
actually) circling a faraway sun has been detected, and someone
needs to go check it out. If habitable,
it could solve a coming cosmos-wide crisis.

Well, truth be told, he’s actually only one of four Chosen Ones, and one of
the others is doing the choosing. Still,
for a jaded, Boosterspice-using, 200-year-old human, it is a chance to once
more venture into unknown portions of the universe, see new things and, if he’s
lucky, meet new beings. Maybe even new
species.

Of
course, the recruiter is a Pierson’s puppeteer, and they are known to be master
manipulators, always with ulterior motives.
And since there will only be four of them making the journey, if the
Dyson sphere is inhabited by hostiles, this will probably be a suicide mission.

But
Pierson’s puppeteers are known to manufacture spaceships with hulls that are
almost impregnable, and if by chance Louis does perish in the adventure, well,
it’s been a good life.

What’s To Like...

Ringworld is a groundbreaking “hard” science
fiction epic that was published in 1970 and garnered a number of sci-fi awards
and generated oodles of scientific debate that year and the next. The story is awash with futuristic devices –
slidewalks, transfer booths, a Kemplerer (sic) rosette, a hyperspace shunt (which gets around that pesky“can’t travel faster than the speed of light" issue), and the
aforementioned Dyson sphere. I’m a
science geek and a sci-fi geek, so I ate it up.

The world-building and species-building are fantastic. I learned a neat new expletive, “Tanj”,
which is an acronym for “There ain’t no justice!” And the use of a tasp instead of a taser is a
marked and curious development. There is
also plenty of wit and humor, including selecting Lying Bastard as the name of the expedition’s ship, and a coitus
interruptus incident involving a rabbit.

If
you’re tired wading through dozens of characters in a novel, then Ringworld’s your book. The four members of the team are the only
ones you need to keep track of, and each of them is a fascinating study. The Pierson’s puppeteer is called Nessus, and I
always like it when humans aren’t at the top of the evolutionary pyramid. In fact, here, they might not even be #2. Speaker-to-Animals
is a kzin, and he supplies the muscle for the group. Teela is a young human who, Nessus claims,
brings genetically-enhanced luck to the party.
And Louis, well, he’s not sure why he was selected, but he’s happy to be
along.

There “cussing” is kewl. Instead
of the standard expletives, which can be off-putting to some, we are treated to phrases like “Tanj”, “Tanjit”,
“Finagle knows”, and the somewhat insulting-but-in-a-friendly-way appellation “Leucote”.

The
ending is a double feature. There’s a
prosaic one, wherein our explorers figure out a way to get off Ringworld. And there’s surprising one that I didn’t see
coming at all. Along the way, Larry
Niven gives us some fascinating insight about interspecies cooperation,
religion as a natural consequence of a collapsed civilization, and the proper precautions
to take when initiating a “first contact” situation.

Kewlest New Word...

Particolored(adj.)
: having a predominant color broken by patches of one or more other colors.

Excerpts...

“You’re going to
chase them down?”

Speaker did not
recognize sarcasm. “I am.”

“With what?” Louis exploded. “You know what they left us? A hyperdrive and a lifesystem, that’s what
they left us! We haven’t got so much as
a pair of attitude jets. You’ve got
delusions of grandeur if you think we can fight a war in this!”

“So the enemy
believes! Little do they know –“

“What enemy?”

“-that in
challenging a kzin-“

“Automatics, you
dolt! An enemy would have started shooting the moment we came in range!”

"I too have wondered
at their unusual strategy.”(pg.
123)

In the asteroid
belt of Sol, men spend half their lives guiding singleships among the
rocks. They take their positions from
the stars. For hours at a time a Belt
miner will watch the stars: the bright quick arcs which are fusion-driven
singleships, the slow, drifting lights which are nearby asteroids, and the
fixed points which are stars and galaxies.

A man can lose
his soul among the white stars. Much
later, he may realize that his body has acted for him, guiding his ship while
his mind traveled in realms he cannot remember.
They call it the far look. It is dangerous. A man’s soul does not always return. (pg. 161)

“Remember the Finagle Laws.
The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum.” (pg. 142)

Ringworld is not a perfect book. Between the “sciency” technical details and
the interactions amongst the four protagonists, the plot sometimes stalls. In a book 342 pages in length, we don’t land
on Ringworld until page 133, don’t see the first sentient Ringworlders until
page 159, and don’t make “first contact” until page 170, which is the halfway
point.

Indeed, for a while I wondered just where the storyline was going. The various stops on Ringworld were interesting, but I kept waiting for something epic
to occur.

But
it should be remembered that Ringworld was written in 1970, and science fiction
in those days was a somewhat tame affair.
For its time, Ringworld was outstanding and probably derivative of both
hard science fiction and space opera.

8½ Stars. There's a reason why it won all those awards listed in the header of this review.

Monday, March 6, 2017

It’s desperation time for Socrates and the
crew of their locomotive, The Great Iron Horse.
They are out of their vital fuel, Starfall, and thus reduced to
scrounging for their fallback energy sources, wood and coal. These are not readily available, due both to
the surrounding landscape and the fact that their train is a half mile long.

So
their hopes are lifted when late one afternoon they pull into a quaint town called
Stormwatch, with an overlooking castle, Dragonwall, and find an indication that
there may be some Starfall nearby. The
townsfolk don’t seem hostile, which is a welcome relief. They do have a rather odd parting phrase
though. “Beware the dragon’s breath!”

Ah, but I don’t see any dragons around; do you? And if one does appear, and has a bad case of
halitosis, well so what? We have a good
fighting crew, and we can always pop a breath mint in the reptile’s mouth.

But hey, the sun’s about to set, the locals are scurrying to their houses, and
time’s a-wasting. So let’s get scouting
for Starfall without further ado.

What’s To Like...

The Dragon’s
Breath is the third book in a series set in a wonderful post-apocalyptic
steampunk world. Socrates is a
mechanical ape, and the head of a band of train-riding explorers tasked by
their far-distant home base of Sanctuary with finding the indispensable,
life-saving Starfall.

This book is similar in style to the first two in the series. The action starts immediately, and doesn’t
let up. There’s lots of bloodshed and
violence, and there are simply are no slow spots. The writing is not spectacular, but it’s
sufficient for making you keep turning the pages. If you like your stories with lots of
mechanical details (if you fancy Tom Clancy), this book’s for
you. And if sand worms are your favorite
beastie (if
you’re a Dune loon), you’ll not not be disappointed. Finally, if your tail’s a-waggin’ for
dragons, you’re in for a treat.

The
backstory of this world is given at 54%, and I always appreciate that. As with the previous book (reviewed here), the plotline, while exciting, is not very twisty. Jamie Sedgwick mixes in enough wit and humor to keep
you entertained; I found Kale’s attempt to ride a mechanical horse (18%) to be hilarious. A
holdover thread from the previous book (Burk) is resolved here.

Everything builds to a properly tense ending. This borders on being a standalone novel,
despite being part of a series. The
target audience seems to be adventure-reading YA boys, except that there’s an
attempted rape (again) at one point. So I’m not
sure. There are also a number of
annoying typos. I don’t normally mention
these unless they are excessive, but at one point here, Sir Elbereth temporarily becomes
Sir Elberone. That’s kinda
unforgivable. The proofreaders should
be shot.

Excerpts...

“What are you
working on?”

“It’s a portable
submersible oxygenation apparatus.”

“A what?”

“After our trip
through the Forgotten Sea, I thought it might be useful to create some sort of
portable breathing system, in case we’re ever trapped underwater again.”

At last, Dane sat
up and said, “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I can’t spend my nights worrying about rocks
falling from the sky when I have very real dragons in my own backyard. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than waking
up face to face with a dragon.”

“I know the
feeling,” said Kale.

Dane looked at
him. “Is that so?” (loc. 1916)

Kindle Details...

The Dragon’s Breath sells for $2.99 at Amazon. As is usual for most of Jamie Sedgwick’s series
(and he has a
bunch of them), the first book, The Clockwork
God, is free, and the second book, Killing
The Machine, is $0.99. I find this to be a most effective marketing
device. There is now a fourth book in
this series, Clockwork Legion, and it sells
for $3.99.

“She’ll be fine as soon as she remembers she’s not a rooster.” (loc. 1019)

There are weaknesses. The dragons may be mean and nasty, but
they’re not very resourceful. This
allows the strategy for Socrates and his cohorts to basically be: “I came, I plotted,
I conquered”. It’s a bit
boring when the baddies can’t come up with anything surprising. Similarly, the titular “dragon’s breath” is
easily avoided. And after Burk gets sprung, it
was immediately obvious, who done it. So why did it take Socrates so long to figure things out?

More
serious were the storytelling WTF’s. The
townspeople give our heroes the sage admonition “Beware the dragon’s breath!” but then fail to
provide any details about what exactly that danger is. WTF?
And when River tries to deal with an undetonated artillery shell, she
ties a noose around it and drags it along behind her speeding vehicle. Holy explosive situation, Batman! WTF?

Last
but not least, is the epilogue. A goodly
supply of the vital Starfall is recovered.
Yet somehow, after three books of harrowing adventures traveling aboard the Great
Iron Horse, including a trip underneath an ocean, the precious cargo is
dispatched back to Sanctuary, with nary a detail about just how this was
accomplished. WTF? I wonder if they shipped it by USPS (United SteamPunk Service)?

That tale could’ve been a great addition to this series.

6 Stars.
Overall, this felt like a “let’s crank
another one out”effort. All the requisites for a steampunk thriller
are here, but without much of a creative spark.
This is probably as far as I’ll go with this series.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

It must be Brutha’s lucky day. Om, the patron god of his hometown Omnia has designated him, a mere novice, to be his “Chosen One”.

Unfortunately,
Om has fallen on hard times lately, and for the last three years he’s been
stuck in a most humiliating manifestation – a turtle. Still, he is a god, and one of the
miraculous things he can do as a turtle is speak to his Chosen One.

For Brutha, this is a mixed blessing.
On one hand, it’s kind of nice to be able to chat with a deity, even if
the god-given advice is rather worthless. On the other hand, being the only
one who can hear Om, Brutha looks like a crazy man when he’s speaking to the
turtle. And others notice this kind of
eccentricity

Such
as Deacon Vorbis, who speaks for Om, even though he’s never ever
spoken with Om. And Deacon
Vorbis also happens to be the head of the Inquisitors, which means he has ways of seeing
what’s inside your head.

Such as drills, and tongs, and fire, and
other extremely uncomfortable implements.

What’s To Like...

Small Godsis
kind of a one-off tale in the Discworld Universe. The only “regulars” we meet are DEATH, the librarian (who only makes a cameo
appearance), and Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, a take-off of the ubiquitous
Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. But not to
worry, the new characters are fun to meet, including a host of philosophers,
religious figures, and gods. My favorite
was St. Ungulant, an anchorite who dwells way out in the desert, although the eagle is pretty
kewl too.

The “small gods” concept is explained early (page 6), and is basically this: a god has power(s) proportional to
the number of his followers, and what those believers are. So being god over a bunch of humans is much
better than being one over a bunch of bacteria.
And when your following dwindles to, say, zero, you cease to exist. Om is down to his last believer, and so is
relegated to being a turtle.

Small Gods is Terry Pratchett at his
finest. There are footnotes, but no
chapters. The wit and silliness
abound. And yet he tackles a sensitive
subject in the form of organized religion, and handles it evenly and subtly
enough to where I don’t think anyone would take offense. Structurally, the storyline is perfect, with
everything building to a great, twisty ending.
There’s even an unusual (for
Discworld tales) epilogue, wherein we learn the rest of Brutha’s story.

Balanced against the serious themes of torture and war in the name of a
god, Pratchett gives us some interesting views on things like the art of
Philosophy, the worth of libraries, and the assets and liabilities of learning
to think for yourself. We even get the “creation
story” behind Discworld (page 25), which was quite the treat.

As
usual, there are lots of smaller details to enjoy. My favorite religion, Gnosticism, gets a
brief mention. So does eidetic memory
and the shadowy History Monks. Small
Gods is an easy and fun read, which is no small feat when addressing topics
such as the Inquisition.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Soughing(v.)
: making a moaning, whistling or rushing sound (such as the wind in the trees)

Others : Baulks(n., plural);Anchorite(n.); Sophistry
(n.)

Excerpts...

“If you’re really
Om, stop being a tortoise.”

“I told you. I can’t.
You think I haven’t tried? Three
years! Most of that time I thought I was a tortoise.”

“Then perhaps you
were. Maybe you’re just a tortoise who thinks he’s a god.”

“Nah. Don’t try philosophy again. Start thinking like that and you end up
thinking maybe you’re just a butterfly dreaming it’s a whelk or something.”(pg. 101)

“I’m reminded of
the time when old Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned,
especially since he hadn’t got any time for this reading business. I said to him, ‘There is no royal road to
learning, sire’ and he said to me, ‘Bloody well build one or I shall have your
legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as
you like. ‘ A refreshingly direct
approach, I always thought. Not a man to
mince words. People, yes. But not words.”

“Why didn’t he
chop your legs off?” said Urn.

“I built him his
road. More or less.”

“How? I thought that was just a metaphor.”

“You’re learning,
Urn.”(pg. 208)

The trouble with being a god
is that you’ve got no one to pray to. (pg.
11)

Small Gods has been on my TBR shelf for a number of years now. I’m not sure why it’s taken
me so long to get around to reading it – I knew going in it was often considered Terry
Pratchett’s best effort from his most creative era.

I
don’t have anything negative to say about the book, and I was impressed by how evenly the author, an avowed humanist, handled the whole touchy subject of religion. So go out and find the book, and treat
yourself to a fascinating tale, and remember the mantra: “The
Turtle Moves”.

10 Stars.
When you can’t find anything at all to
quibble about, what other rating can you give?